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Monday, August 27, 2007

I just finished reading Michael Ross's The Volunteer: The Incredible True Story of an Israeli Spy on the Trail of International Terrorists. See this previous thread for original discussion.

Did you ever wonder what it was like to go through training in the Mossad? What kind of stuff do you do? How do they operate (in sometimes fairly specific terms)? If so, then this book is for you. It's a quick read, informally written and engaging. The Canadian Ross takes us from his dawning interest in Israel, his conversion to Judaism, his enlistment in the IDF and his joining, operations in, and ultimately retirement from, the Mossad. I found it all extremely entertaining.

The Publisher's Weekly review on the Amazon page looks particularly silly now, taking itself more seriously and more deeply than the book itself, as though the reviewer skipped straight to the epilogue (that final chapter in books like this where the author does a little "lessons I've learned" wrap-up) and wrote his review from that. This is a simple memoir -- "I did this, then that...I met him, I liked her" kind of thing. There are no major pretensions here and the book doesn't require them. It's quite different from other books about Israeli intelligence ops which purport to be researched tomes on events and history. This guy just tells you where he was and what he did. That's good enough.

I'm thinking he's not going to be returning to South Africa any time soon (and I'll leave that at that).

I think readers here would enjoy it.

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